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Aileen Stanley, born Maude Elsie Aileen Muggeridge (March 21, 1893 – March 24, 1982), was one of the most popular American singers of the early 1920s.

Early lifeAileen Stanley was born Maude Elsie Aileen Muggeridge on March 21, 1893, in Chicago, Illinois, Aileen was the youngest of four children of English parents Robert S. and Maria (née Capewell) Muggeridge who had immigrated from England in 1887. Aileen's sister Elsie Sherrif Muggeridge, died of typhoid in August 1892, passing it on to their father who died of the disease seven months before Aileen's birth. Her widowed mother resided in Chicago along with her surviving siblings, brothers Stanley and Robert Jr.Performances and recordingsFrom childhood, she sang and danced in vaudeville with her older brother Stanley as Stanley and Aileen, with the encouragement of their widowed mother. After her brother left the act, Aileen started performing solo, forming her stage name by reversing the name of the old family billing.Stanley performed in vaudeville and cabarets. In 1920 she was a hit in New York City in the revue show Silks And Satins and made the first of her numerous recordings the same year. The majority of her records in the '20s were for the Victor Talking Machine Company, but she also recorded with other labels with recording studios in the New York City area, including Edison, Pathe, Okeh, Brunswick, Vocalion, Gennett and others. On some of her early recordings she was accompanied by Rosario Bourdon's Orchestra. Many of her records sold well at the time. According to Joel Whitman, her most successful early recordings included "My Mammy" (1921), "Sweet Indiana Home" (1922), both written by Walter Donaldson; she also recorded other Walter Donaldson songs including "My Little Bimbo Down on a Bamboo Isle" (1920), "Dixie Highway" (1922), "Carolina in the Morning" (1922), "Back Where The Daffodils Grow" (1924), and "Don't be angry with me" (1926).Between 1922 and 1924, and again in the late '20s, Victor Records produced a popular series of records pairing Stanley with singer Billy Murray. One of Stanley's 1925 Victor recordings, "When My Sugar Walks Down the Street", in which she shared the vocal with newcomer Gene Austin, helped launch Austin's illustrious career. She recorded J. Russel Robinson and Con Conrad's 1920 jazz standard "Singin' the Blues", released as Victor 18703.She recorded the Paul Whiteman and Fred Rose composition "Flamin' Mamie" on October 5, 1925, and released it as Victor 19828-A accompanied on ukulele by Billy "Uke" Carpenter who provided "jazz effects".Stanley also recorded for Black Swan Records, a label purportedly devoted only to African-American artists, under the pseudonyms "Mamie Jones" and "Georgia Gorham". Her handling of blues material was similar to that of some of the northern black vaudeville singers of the time. Her stage appearances billed her as "The Phonograph Girl" and "The Girl With The Personality." In later life she was overheard to say that the song "I'll Get By" was written for her.Later lifeStanley was said to have invested heavily in the stock market and was one of the many who lost most of their life's savings in the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Around 1931 Stanley moved to London, where she made more records for HMV from 1934 through 1937, and once confided "strictly entre nous" that she unwittingly ended her own romance when she introduced Wallis Simpson to Edward, Prince of Wales, at the home of Thelma, Lady Furness. In her later years she worked as a singing teacher and vocal coach.She died in 1982 in Los Angeles, California, aged 89, and was buried (under the name Aileen Stanley Muggeridge) at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale.Aileen StanleyAileen StanleyDuets of Aileen Stanley and Billy Murray on Internet Archive's site archive.orgGrayce S. Burian collection of Aileen Stanley materials, 1898-1983Aileen Stanley at Find a Grave

1915

Hank D'Amico

Clarinet/saxophone

b. Rochester, NY, USA.

d. 1965.

An outstanding swing clarinetist, Hank D'Amico switched to that instrument from violin in high school. He began playing professionally with Paul Specht's band in 1936, then that same year joined Red Norvo. After two years, D'Amico began radio broadcasts with his own octet before returning briefly to Norvo's group in 1939.

He played with Bob Crosby's orchestra in 1940 and 1941, then had his own big band about a year. D'Amico had short stints in the bands of Les Brown, Benny Goodman and Norvo again before working for CBS in New York. He also found time to play with Miff Mole and Tommy Dorsey. D'Amico spent ten years as a staff musician for ABC, and then played with Jack Teagarden in 1954. From that part he mostly worked with small groups, infrequently forming his own band. D'Amico played at the 1964 World's Fair in New York with The Morey Field trio.

Composer, songwriter, author and pianist, educated at the Moscxow Conservatory and Columbia University (architecture degree). He wrote His Broadway special material for the 'Passing Show' revues, was a vaudeville pianist, and had his own night club, Club Anatole. His Broadway stage scores include "The Wife Hunters" and "Broadway to Paris". Joining ASCAP in 1923, his chief musical collaborators included L. Wolfe Gilbert and Harold Atteridge.

Eddie James "Son" House, Jr. (March 21, 1902 – October 19, 1988) was an American delta blues singer and guitarist, noted for his highly emotional style of singing and slide guitar playing.After years of hostility to secular music, as a preacher and for a few years also as a church pastor, he turned to blues performance at the age of 25. He quickly developed a unique style by applying the rhythmic drive, vocal power and emotional intensity of his preaching to the newly learned idiom. In a short career interrupted by a spell in Parchman Farm penitentiary, he developed to the point that Charley Patton, the foremost blues artist of the Mississippi Delta region, invited him to share engagements and to accompany him to a 1930 recording session for Paramount Records.Issued at the start of the Great Depression, the records did not sell and did not lead to national recognition. Locally, House remained popular, and in the 1930s, together with Patton's associate Willie Brown, he was the leading musician of Coahoma County. There he was a formative influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. In 1941 and 1942, House and the members of his band were recorded by Alan Lomax and John W. Work for the Library of Congress and Fisk University. The following year, he left the Delta for Rochester, New York, and gave up music.

In 1964, a group of young record collectors discovered House, whom they knew of from his records issued by Paramount and by the Library of Congress. With their encouragement, he relearned his repertoire and established a career as an entertainer, performing for young, mostly white audiences in coffeehouses, at folk festivals and on concert tours during the American folk music revival, billed as a "folk blues" singer. He recorded several albums, and some informally taped concerts have also been issued as albums. House died in 1988.In addition to his early influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, he was an inspiration to John Hammond, Alan Wilson (of Canned Heat), Bonnie Raitt, the White Stripes, Dallas Green and John Mooney.In 2017, his single, "Preachin' the Blues" was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame.READ MORE...Son House - Wikipedia

Born as Friederike Massaryk, she was one of the leading operetta singers in Berlin and Vienna. By 1912 her fame was such that one spoke simply of "die Massary (the Massary)". She was a premier Diva of her generation. She was closely associated with Oscar Straus, creating roles in six of his operettas, notably Der letzte Walzer in 1920.

Despite her 1903 conversion to Protestantism, Massary fled Germany in late 1932 because of her Jewish heritage. She traveled through Austria and Switzerland to London, where she was befriended by Sir Noel Coward and starred in his Operette in 1938. Shortly thereafter, in February 1939, she moved to Beverly Hills, California, where she lived until her death in 1969. Beginning in 1952, she regularly spent summers in Germany.

Massary was married twice, first to an eye doctor Bernhard Pollack, whom she later refused to discuss or even mention. With Karl-Kuno Rollo Graf von Coudenhove (1887 - 1940), she had her only child, Elisabeth Maria Karl (called Liesl) (1903-1979). Liesl later married the author Bruno Frank. Though Coudenhove was Liesl's father, Massary was never married to him. In fact, Coudenhove's family was nobility and threatened him with a mental institution to dissuade him from marrying an actress. Massary's second marriage, in 1917, was to the Austrian actor Max Pallenberg (1877 - 1934), who died in a plane crash in Karlsbad in 1934.SEE ALSO:

The talented Santo Pecora accomplished a great deal during his career, including some versatile challenges that other players from the New Orleans jazz scene were either unable to meet, uninterested, or both. Nonetheless even the relatively small segment of society impressed by such achievements would probably find the situation regarding this artist's name more fascinating, certainly more amusing. His real name was Santo Pecoraro--but so, however, was the name of his cousin who was born about four years later. Generously or maybe sensing an opportunity, the elder man trimmed his name slightly. The percussionist who got to keep the Santo Pecoraro monicker actually did work in a band with Pecora, the liason bearing discographical fruit in terms of several compilation tracks.

French horn was Pecora's first instrument, chosen as a child. In his teens he switched to trombone, an axe much more appropriate to the instrumental styles developing in New Orleans. Professionally he has said to have begun as a player in a the silent cinema orchestra pit, but he had already worked casually with bandleaders such as Johnny De Droit and Leon Roppolo. Vocalist Bea Palmer took the trombonist on a road tour in the early '20s and by the middle of that decade Pecora had teamed up with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. Chicago and its fervid interest in the new jazz styles became an important destination for him, like many players from his geographical background, with additional theatre music work filling in the schedule.

During the '30s his course of action regarding employment was again similar to his peers on the national jazz scene as opposed to New Orleans stylists: he headed for the big bands. He did not abandon his musical homeground, however, bringing the Crescent City sounds to New York City with Sharky Bonano's aggregation in the mid '30s. Subsequently the trombonist set himself up on the west coast, his skills honed and ready for studio assignments. Collaborators from the stylistic good old days included the one-armed trumpeter and bandleader Wingy Manone. Pecora returned to New Orleans in the '40s, having evolved into a bandleader in his own right. He also kept working with Bonano, gigged on riverboats and was solidly cemented into a series of epic club residencies. In the '60s his spot of choice was The Dream Room.

Leonid Osipovich Utyosov was a famous Soviet jazz singer and comic actor of jewish origin, who became the first pop singer to be awarded the prestigious title of People's Artist of the USSR (1965).Biography

Leonid Utyosov was brought up in Odessa, Russian Empire and attended the Faig School of Commerce, from which he dropped out and joined the Borodanov Circus troupe as an acrobat. He started his stage career in 1911 in Kremenchuk, then returned to Odessa, changed his artistic name to Leonid Utyosov, and performed as a stand up comedian with the Rosanov troupe and with the Rishelyavsky Theatre. In 1917, he won a singing competition in Gomel, Belarus, then performed in Moscow.In the 1920s, he moved to Leningrad and set up one of the first Soviet jazz bands. In Leningrad, he began collaboration with the popular composer, Isaak Dunayevsky, which turned out to be a breakthrough for both artists. At that time, Utyosov built a band of the finest musicians available in Leningrad, and created a style all his own - a jazz show with stand up comedy, which blended several styles, ranging from Russian folk songs to a variety of international cosmopolitan genres. In 1928, Utyosov toured Europe and attended performances of American jazz bands in Paris, which influenced his own style. During the 1930s, Utyosov and his band, called "Thea-Jazz" (a portmanteau of Theatrical Jazz) had a regular gig at the Marble Hall of the Kirov Palace of Culture in Leningrad. Utyosov's jazz band also performed at the Leningrad Maly Opera theatre, at the "Svoboda-teatr," and at the Leningrad Music Hall. In his performances, Utyosov delivered a variety of musical styles, including such genres as American jazz, Argentine tango, French chanson, upbeat dance, and Russian folk music.

Leonid Utyosov with Lyubov Orlova in Jolly Fellows

His popularity was on the rise in the 1930s when he co-starred with Lyubov Orlova in the comedy Jolly Fellows. In it, Utyosov performed such hits as "Serdtse" (Heart). During World War II, Utyosov performed on the front lines, helping lift the spirits of the Soviet soldiers fighting against the Nazis. On Victory Day (May 9, 1945), he performed on Sverdlov Square in Moscow.Utyosov lived in Moscow for the rest of his life, albeit in many of his songs he alluded to his native town of Odessa, where a monument to him was dedicated in 2000.Richard Stites writes:

In the years of the "red jazz age" (1932–1936) European and Soviet bands were heard in dozens of cities. The kings were Alexander Tsfasman and Leonid Utesov. ... Utesov - musically far less gifted - was actually more popular than Tsfasman, partly because of the spectacular success of his comedy film Happy-Go-Lucky Guys, but mostly because his Odessa background and his circus and carnival road experience on the southern borscht belt gave him a clowning manner. He resembled his idol, the personable Ted ("Is everybody happy?") Lewis more than he did any of the great jazz figures of the time. In fact, Utesov was the typical estrada entertainer - quick witted, versatile, and funny. He was not only one of the stars of the 1930s but also a personal favorite of Stalin.

One of the great Broadway producers during the first third of the 20th century. Remembered today for his annual 'Ziegfeld Follies'shows which were staged from 1907 to the mid-thirties, and celebrated 'The American Woman' (mostly Un-Clad - but with stunning 1 meter Headdresses). Some of his other successful stage productions, including 'Rio Rita' and 'Sally' (starring Marylin Miller), were made into Movie musicals in the early talkies-era. He was married to actress Anna Held (1897 - 1913) and to Billie Burke (1913 - 1932) till his death.

MICHAEL STEINMAN'S JAZZ LIVES!

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JAZZ AGE RADIO BROADCASTS!

That Gramophone Show showcases real music nostalgia when Neil Starr takes you on a trip down memory lane with music sourced exclusively off 78 RPM shellac records. Music covers anything from 1910 to the late 1950s. Radio Today (@Radio2Day) broadcasts on 1485 AM in Johannesburg and country-wide on DStv audio channel 869.

Join your host, Randy Brian, as he takes you on a time-travelling tour of the 1920s, '30s and '40s with hot jazz, dance bands, comedy and personality discs, big band swing, early blues, and other vintage records that keep alive the Spirit of 78. And there's a middle hour devoted to old-time radio drama and comedy, too.

Description:Glenn Robison's weekly, hour-long radio program of 1920s and 30s pop and jazz. Glenn plays 78 RPM records of "toe-tapping" music from hot dance bands, as well as sweet bands, novelty tunes, soundtracks, blues, jazz and more.

Description:Blues Before Sunrise showcases blues as part of a cultural landscape that includes jump and jive, rhythm and blues, swing, doo wop, gospel, comedy, and recitation, and never is the music presented as kitsch or retro fashion in the way that some music has been exploited and trivialized. For host Steve Cushing, the blues is a living African-American tradition with deep roots.LISTEN

THE IAN WHITCOMB SHOW is a rip-roaring rollercoaster of music from the golden age of Tin Pan Alley and British Music Hall through classic country & western and early R&B up until the British Invasion of the 1960s.

Step into the Club every Friday evening for a sampling of music from "The Jazz Age" with Guy Rathbun. Across the spectrum of pop and jazz from the late teens to the early 1930s, this weekly series invites you the share in the talents and tales of the musicians and performers that created an unforgettable era.

RADIOLA! is foremost a program of the best pop and jazz from the 1920s and 1930s, music which is unavailable anywhere else on local airwaves. These recordings shimmer with wit and levity, brim with deep joy, and beat with the pulse of life.

Every Saturday afternoon, Rob Bamberger stacks his recordings on a luggage cart and makes his way across the river to WAMU and what he calls his perch in studio four. From 8 until 11 p.m., the air is filled with vintage jazz, swing, and big band recordings from the '20s, '30s, and '40s.

jazz [jaz]–noun1. music originating in New Orleans around the beginning of the 20th century and subsequently developing through various increasingly complex styles, generally marked by intricate, propulsive rhythms, polyphonic ensemble playing, improvisatory, virtuosic solos, melodic freedom, and a harmonic idiom ranging from simple diatonicism through chromaticism to atonality.2. a style of dance music, popular esp. in the 1920s, arranged for a large band and marked by some of the features of jazz.3. dancing or a dance performed to such music, as with violent bodily motions and gestures.4. Slang. liveliness; spirit; excitement.